After a slight delay, Apple on Monday announced that a new app-slicing feature, which lets you download just the parts of an app that are truly necessary to save storage space, is now available.

"The issue affecting app slicing has been fixed, and device-specific versions of apps will be delivered when downloaded by users running iOS 9.0.2 or later," Cupertino said on its developer news site. If you're running an older version of Apple's mobile OS, the App Store will continue to deliver the Universal versions of the apps, which may contain things that don't work on your device and take up some unnecessary space.

The announcement comes after Apple in late September delayed the feature, which was supposed to arrive with iOS 9, due to an iCloud bug.

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With app slicing, developers can mark off the sections of an app that are specific to, say, an iPad. Then, when a 16GB iPhone owner who is worried about free space enables app slicing, the device won't download the iPad-specific sections. It can even be narrowed down to specific devices, so you don't download things for iPhone 5s if you have an iPhone 6, for example.

"Slicing is the process of creating and delivering variants of the app bundle for different target devices," Apple explains on its iOS Developer Library. "A variant contains only the executable architecture and resources that are needed for the target device."

The feature should be especially helpful for those still purchasing Apple's measly 16GB iPhones or iPads, considering the fact that Live Photos are going to eat up a chunk of your storage, after all.

About the Author

Angela has been a PCMag reporter since January 2012. Prior to joining the team, she worked as a reporter for SC Magazine, covering everything related to hackers and computer security. Angela has also written for The Northern Valley Suburbanite in New Jersey, The Dominion Post in West Virginia, and the Uniontown-Herald Standard in Pennsylvania. She ... See Full Bio

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